With over 1 billion downloads to date, it’s safe to say that Rovi’s creation, Angry Birds, is an amazing success story. But what comes after that? Is the company going to milk the Angry Birds franchise for all that it’s worth? According to ArcticStartup, the answer is no. Earlier this week Rovio purchased the two man team behind the game “Casey’s Contraptions“. Think of it like a Rube Goldberg simulator. Rovio’s Vice President of Franchise Development, Ville Heijari, says: “We are currently reworking the title to enhance it, and getting ready to re-introduce it in a true ‘expect the unexpected’ Rovio style launch to an even larger audience.” On a Finnish news show this morning, Mikael Hed, Rovio’s CEO, said that the company will reboot “Casey’s Contraptions” into a new game called “Amazing Alex”. He goes on to say that said game will hit the market in two months time. There’s no word as to which platforms are going to be supported, but knowing how Rovio work has worked in the past, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to say “Amazing Alex” is going to run on damn near every smartphone platform that’s currently relevant.
We wish Rovio all the luck in the world, and we’re thrilled that they’re finally going to try to introduce something to the market that isn’t Angry Birds. Most folks don’t know this, but Angry Birds wasn’t Rovio’s first game; It was their 52nd title. As of today, people have been hurling birds at pigs for 29 months, so it’s starting to show its age. The most recent release, “Angry Birds Space”, has added some new gameplay elements, but for the most part it’s remained the same.
It’s starting to look like between “Amazing Alex” and whatever Andreas Illiger is going to release in the coming weeks, there’s going to be a lot of people with sore thumbs this summer.